Wizardry Online OB Podcast Summary

Wizardry Online OB Podcast Summary

This afternoon SOE offered up a brief Q&A session on changes coming to Wizardry Online. Though the 24 minute podcast can still be viewed on their SOE channel HERE I’ll save you some time and sum up the major points covered.

Although commercial launch (previously announced as beginning of open beta) will be January 16th, players are now free to test the game out in an open beta test going on now. This will however have a Soul Wipe prior to commercial launch so be prepared to have your characters sent back to start, likely on the 13th of January.

The primary response from CB testers was that the cutscene text was too slow and they lasted too long. Players will now be able to skip cutscenes, a useful feature especially for returning players from CB that have already seen them.

In response to feedback, the Soul Name and Character Name will be reversed to be more akin to western standards of surname and given name practices. This caused much confusion in naming in CB.

A new underground sewer dungeon will be introduced as the final dungeon of the chapter 1 storyline. It’s supposedly going to be huge and take hardcore players days and most weeks to level up to even have a chance of tackling successfully.

Those that participated in the closed beta will receive rewards on their account. Those that participate in the open beta will also be given a reward different from the CB reward. And yes greedy players you are able to get both rewards and apparently you won’t want to miss the open beta reward.

The devs mentioned that the focus of the CB testing was to figure out how their servers functioned and work a bit on class balancing. Open beta will be more geared towards addressing community concerns, adjusting gameplay rules, and gauging the economy and Royal Shop (the Wizardry Online cash shop).

The Royal Shop will be open in OB but Station Cash is still disabled. Instead players will be able to spend a flat rate of 10,000 gold to buy any Royal Shop Items. The devs will be keeping an eye to see what is popular and what players feel needs adjustment.

The Royal Shop will feature items to improve gear forging. Items to prevent the chance of gear from breaking. Cosmetic Armor that hides what actual armor you are wearing. Spheres that contain random items. Potion type consumables and much more. The podcasters were quoted saying it is “Pay for Convenience. Pay for Security. Not Pay 2 Win.”

Wizardry Online will support the SOE All Access Pass.

Criminal Status duration was asked about and the devs stated that so many factors go into calculating it that it’s very difficult to give an exact answer on how long you will be a criminal. Use common judgement and guess for yourself based on the crime you commit.

There are no current plans for a new class though the chat room was dying for an archer class.

After much badgering one of the devs confirmed that the random stat roll can reach as high as 70 (he did not say that was the max roll). He also said it would take hours if not days to manage to get a roll that high and even getting above 12 could be an exercise in madness.

They mentioned that multi-classing was not very popular in CB and encouraged players to try it out in OB. They also encourage the community to join their Wikia page and contribute as much as they can to grow an active community (and perhaps learn a thing or two!).

Finally and perhaps the biggest announcement of all is that there will be separate servers for NA and EU but that you will be given the option to choose your server upon rolling your character. They promised players would experience no lag even if they choose not to play in their region.

Another podcast was slated for about a week from now so stay tuned to OnRPG for more details covering Wizardry Online!